Imperial Edge
by
Celinda Labrousse
Table of Contents
Title Page
Print Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Author’s Note
Preview: Imperial Hilt (Book 2 in Miranda’s saga)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be mixed up with anything that is real. Any resemblance to actual events locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
IMPERIAL EDGE Copyright 2020 by Celinda Labrousse. All rights reversed. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Digital Edition 2020
Cover art by Karri Klawiter
Published by Labrousse Enterprises
All rights reserved
To Jessica finally one you can read ;-)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Author’s Note
Preview: Imperial HIlt (Book 2 in Miranda’s saga)
Chapter 1
Breakfast was served in the kitchen. The press cook stove, a hold over from three generations back, still managed to pump out usable heat, even though the thing was held together with duct tape and prayers. The button to the oven door had to be pushed at just the right angle or it would fall off. Then the whole thing would have to cool down before the handle could be reattached. That’s why most of the morning’s fixins lay scattered in different dishes across the top burners.
Thinly sliced ors butt in one pan. Baking beans in another. Plus who could forget the pancakes. The fluffy mix of water and fresh ground wheat that was the staple crop of Oreilly 13 smelled no less appetizing this morning than every morning of Miranda’s 17 years.
“Can you take over for me, sweetie?” asked her mom as she floated towards the warm pile of pancakes stacked high by the stove.
“Sure,” said Miranda. Miranda’s mom was a stout woman. Strong arms that could lift a large stack of pancakes in one hand and a plate overflowing with ors butt in the other. Both of which she carried over to the table where the kids were all lined up in a row. Michael rounded the corner, ending the line of forks and knives ready to devour the feast.
Miranda poured another dollop of dough into the pan. It sizzled on contact. She smiled, watching the cooking batter with one eye and her family eating everything in sight with the other.
“What are you all doing here today?” Miranda asked her older brother Micah. It was a rarity to see him, his wife, and their brood. The trek from town where they lived to the homestead was long.
“Anna drove us since I got off shift last night,” Micah said, giving his wife a shoulder hug. I forced a smile to my face.
“Your dad called me yesterday morning. Said the harvest was coming in quicker than he’d anticipated.” It was dangerous asking for help with harvest. A second crew could mean an extra toll cost. But Michael was too short to reach the second turbine controls and I had my hands full with the animals now that Mary Ann was married. As the eldest Micah would inherit the farm, so by calling him Dad was walking a fine line. Micah was family, not a worker, so the tax might be bypassed. Maybe.
“Must be some crop,” Mom replied. The controlled expression on her face said that she hadn’t known Dad had called in reinforcements either. Interesting.
“Don’t know until I get out there today,” Micah said through mouthfuls of syrup-drenched fluff. “All I know for sure is that he thinks it will all go up in smoke if isn’t in by tomorrow.”
All the eating came to a screeching halt. Harvest fires were no joke on Oreilly 13. They destroyed more than the crops. Some could wipe out a barn full of livestock and keep going. They spread like plague across farms, devastating whole farmsteads. People died.
“If Dad thinks there’s going to be a fire...” Miranda started to say.
“Better to be wary,” Micah said, shoving another mound of pancakes into his mouth. The chorus of forks and knives on plates resumed. Fire changed everything. The extra tax would be worth it. Even if we couldn’t get it all in, there would be less to burn around the house and spread to our neighbors.
“Won’t the Ironsides save us?” Michael piped up.
“From fire?” Mary yawned. “Not very likely.” Micah shot her a hard look.
“But my vid lesson this week said that Ironsides are here to protect us from everything!” Michael informed us all. Mother and I stifled a laugh. Those vid programs made Ironsides out to be superheroes. Every boy and girl from the outer galaxies wanted to be one. It’s why second sons like Michael often ended up in the military.
“Ironsides keep the planet safe from rebels and invading forces. They don’t really take care of planetary fires,” Mary corrected.
“But the vid said...” Michael started to say.
“Who wants more pancakes?” Mom interrupted, cutting off the conversation. Every little hand went up. Soon the plate sat empty beside Miranda, ready for the batch she’d just finished cooking up. She flipped them out onto the plate and poured the last of the batter onto the griddle stone.
“Here, I can take it back over if you want to eat,” Mom said, going to take up her place by the stove. Miranda scooted past her, intent on filling her plate to overflowing. This would likely be the only hot meal of the day. All hands on deck to bring the harvest in. No wonder Dad was already out in the fields. He was probably laying down fire breaks to minimise the possibility of damage if a blaze caught early.
She would have her hands full wrangling in the livestock with Mother.
“I’m off,” Micah proclaimed. He kissed the tops of his three kids’ heads as he made his way down the table towards the door. “No time like the present.” He stopped long enough to kiss Anna on the cheek. “Get some rest sweetheart. You deserve it after that drive.” She smiled back at him. It was a tired smile with dreams of a soft bed and a pillow in its future.
“Where’s Oscar?” Micah asked. Michael and Morgan stared hard down into their plates.
“What did you two do now?” Miranda scolded them. Her hands migrated naturally to her hips. It was the stance Mary Ann use to take with her when she’d gone and done something she didn’t want anyone to know about.
“Leave me out of this,” Micah said, stepping out the door and into the morning sun. The door swung shut behind him with a clang.
“Me too,” said Anna. “I�
�m to bed. Micah, you watch over your sister Anna and mind what Grandma Mary tells you, you hear?” The two oldest nodded their heads.
“Mary, it’s been nice seeing you. When I wake up and this settles down, I’ll be happy to catch up.” Anna pulled away from the table, her blue cotton dress falling neatly back over her knees all the way to her ankles. Anna was all the way up the stairs when Miranda turned on her two younger siblings.
“Answer the question,” she said. The two looked at each other, looked at Miranda, then proceeded to stare at the floor. Their faces glued to spots only they could see.
“Out with it,” Miranda barked. Michael winced.
“It’s not our fault, honest,” Morgan caved first. “I closed the door after I came in I swear.”
“Yeah, I saw her latch it and everything,” Michael chimed in. “The stupid piece of junk done popped the door open and run out before either of us could get to the bottom of the stairs.”
“Michael you watch your tongue. I wouldn’t have such language in my house!” Mom scolded him.
“How long has he been missing?” Miranda said, moving her hands from her hips to her temples. She could feel a headache coming on.
“Since before Mom started frying the ors butt.”
Morgan started snickering. Something about the word butt always gave her the giggles.
“You mean to tell me that Oscar has at least an hour, if not two, head start, and you didn’t think to tell any of us this?” Miranda confirmed.
“Well I just...” Michael started to say.
At the same time, Morgan said, “Yes, but we were hungry.”
“And what? You think we would have sent you out looking for him and that you would have missed breakfast?” Miranda asked, hands firmly back on hips.
“Yeah,” they chorused.
“You can’t beat their logic,” Micah the Third added from his seat in the middle.
“I wasn’t asking you,” Miranda said, “I was asking them.” She stared down both of them, each with an extra stink eye. Miranda looked over at her mother.
“They will do all your chores while you’re gone,” Mom said. Miranda wanted to argue. To tell her that the family would be much better off without the stupid escape-artist robot. That as small kids her brother and sister could track the thing better than she could. Nothing came out of her mouth. It hung open for the moment, then closed of its own accord.
“I better get a move on then,” said Miranda.
“Yes,” Mom said.
Miranda stuck a fork in the top of the pancake pile and shoved the thing into her mouth and trudged out the door. She was too hungry not to have breakfast. Plus what good would it do the family to find Oscar if she just lost him again because she passed out from hunger? She stepped out onto the porch, desperate for any sign of the disobedient robot. Something on the edge of the field flashed, blinding her. She raised her hand to shield her eyes and sighed through her mouth of pancake. This was going to be one long day.
Chapter 2
MIRANDA CURSED HER sister. Mary Ann had left for her own homestead in the Parsol system as soon as she turned eighteen leaving Miranda to rangle up the droid when it made it’s monthly run for the hills.
“Oscar! Oh, Oscar!” she called. She’d picked up the droid’s trail not too far from the house. The bot had no camo-unit functions so it left a track you could drive a hoverboard through. Not that Miranda owned a hoverboard. There was an old hoverbike in pieces in the garage. Her eldest brother Micah had pulled the thing apart to fix it and never got the parts to fit back together. Dad was always talking about selling the thing, but he never did. Her family was way too nostalgic. Hence why she was tracking an old piece of junk past the homestead boundary and into the outer forest. The thing wasn’t even worth the half day of work she was missing, but her hide was worth it. So were her ears. Her mother would have both if she walked back through the front door without Oscar.
She followed the path up off the grassy plain and into the tree edge at the base of the valley floor. It continued into the forest. If his goal was to lose her then he was making all the right moves.
“Oscar, you stupid robot; get back here!” she yelled. Nothing. No squeaky wheels or obscene beeping. The droid was truly good and lost.
“This is going to take up a whole day,” she told the trees. Then she heard it.
It started out as a buzzing sound low and far away. Then it grew until it was a roar right above her head. That noise certainly wasn’t Oscar. She looked up in the general direction it was coming from. A black spot marked something flying in the sky casting a shadow through the trees. It was a hovercraft; black, with a large oval body and tiny tiny wings. The trees limited her view of it, but the noise that it made marked it as one of the old S series models that firefighters and low ranking government officials used to travel around the planet.
Dad had been right. If it was the fire brigade coming out this far, the fields where burning somewhere and we had very little time to pull in the crop and ready the farm. Fire flyovers meant evacuations. If Oscar stayed out without a family member it would for sure be picked up by a reclaim bot and upcycled for parts. Or worse, melted down. Miranda quickened her pace.
For being an old piece of junk Oscar sure could move fast when he wanted to. Not two hours gone and the thing was far enough away that Miranda couldn't see the house anymore.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid bot!” she yelled at the tracks in front of her. She tripped on a tree root, taking a tumble into a bramble bush. Thorns scraped her arms and clung to her dress. She didn’t like the blue thing all that much, but she didn’t want patches on it either.
“Stupid droid!” she screamed. Maybe if it heard her it would feel bad and come back. The incline was growing steeper by the minute. The trees thinned out as the air dipped below breathable levels.
“Oscar!” Miranda yelled. The word echoed off the rocks. Miranda’s mother Mary had named the stupid thing when she had gotten it off a caravan trader at the planetary fair back when she was a little girl.
“The bot’s first-generation tech,” Miranda recited from memory. Which of course was a bunch of ors pucks, but Miranda’s mom had been eight and in love with everything Lander at the time. Even getting to trade with an offworlder was a huge thing for a girl of eight. She gave up two woven bolts of the finest spun silk for the worthless excuse of a droid.
Oreilly 13 was a harvest planet, colonised for food production. All mountain ranges and fertile valleys. People in the capital planet of Creche needed food. Given that the entire planet had become a kind of city with middle and upper tiers, it was no wonder the empire seeded planets on the outer rims like Dad sowed wheat. Oreilly 13 was a third-generation seedling, the governments and towns just starting to have on-world trade. The silk was one of the few goods offworlders valued. Heavy tolls on the wheat kept prices down. Sure, some farmers provided meats like sheep and ors. Ors being the most common. Both were imports after the planet was colonized. But there were rare occasions when they took to a planet’s terraforming and made it their own.
Miranda amused herself by trying to remember all the rules to farm steaders. On a first generation seed planet, it was different. You had your family and that was it. Oreilly 13 was in its third generation so it made the laws harder. Only a male could inherit. Either a son or a son-in-law. You had to be married when your father passed away. No single person could get a farm. It took a brood to keep a homestead operational and the Empire did not wish for its subjects to fail to produce.
Miranda was so deep into her thoughts that she missed the edge of the ravine and went toppling over. Down she fell, end over end. Her head, shoulder and back bounced off the side of the ravine until she found herself on a shelf. Her butt hit something hard.
Tears stung her eyes, but at least she wasn’t falling anymore.
“Oscar, you stupid robot! Why’d you have to run off so far? Dad said that there might be fire. Fire! And now I’ve fallen down this ravine
. So someone will have to stop prepwork and bringing in the harvest to come and haul me out of this stupid place, all because of you!” Her words echoed off the walls bouncing their harsh tones back at her.
“Stupid place, stupid place” the walls replied. The sun overhead had begun to dip down. How long would it take them to track her beacon? She’d been walking for at least six hours before her fall. On the family hovercraft it would take maybe forty minutes. But the hover cart couldn’t trek through the forest, so they would probably send Mom or Miranda’s sister-in-law out with a wedger. Those things weren’t as reliable as a good hover engine, but they got the job done. At max she’d be down here an hour and then they would be hauling her out and scolding her for getting lost trying to find a lost droid.
“You’ll never live this down,” she told the walls.
“You’ll never, you’ll never, you’ll never” her voice echoed back. On the inside wrist of her arm lay a small button-like bulge that acted as a beacon. It would relay a distress signal back to her family. Better to have a dinner story than to die of dehydration and pride. She hit the tracking button. And waited.
Miranda sighed. It was more than falling, than getting lost. She’d failed to retrieve Oscar. There was no chasing it farther up the mountain. Not without a true search crew, and no droid was worth that. The droid was truly lost this time. Nothing she could say or do would change that.
Time passed. The sun slid from right above her to behind the edge of the ravine, covering her in a blanket of darkness. It wasn’t pitch black. But it would make it harder for her family to find her. Why weren’t they here yet?
Even if they’d sent the kids walking with a laser tether they would have been within calling distance by now. Miranda was perplexed.
She stood up and began to pace. What was taking them so long? Didn’t they know that she was helpless? Was the possibility of fire shifted to real fire? Maybe they’d had to evacuate and in the rush forgot that she was out there.
Miranda’s heart started to thump rapidly in her chest. There was no way they could have forgotten about her, right? She wasn’t so sure anymore. Maybe they were all dead and no one was coming for her.
Imperial Edge Page 1